NEW AGENT FOR BUSH FELLING

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1227, 10 November 1874, Page 4

NEW AGENT FOR BUSH FELLING

Science, that true assistant of labour, promises to provide a simple remedy, which while giving ample time for the workmen to get beyond the reach of clanger, also greatly lessens the labour, substituting an almost instantaneous process of bringing down large trees. This process is the application of gun cotton compressed into disks. These disks are placed round the tree in a continuous band, the edge of each disk touching that of the disks adjacent. This band is exploded or detonated by means of a stroke from a spring hammer so arranged as to permit of all persons concerned reaching a safe distance before the detonation is effected. The Engineer, which recounts the experiments by this system of gun cotton disks, says that " a band of these disks was placed round the trunk of a very large tree at Upnor, and detonated," the result being that the tree " was instantaneously severed as though felled with an axe." This is the true agent for felling the giants of our forest. It is simple, easily handled, requires only due care and attention, and delicate manipulation, just as does a steam engine. The rapidity of the action of those suppressed disks of gun cotton by detonation may be understood when it is stated that by experiment it has been ascertained that the detonation proceeds with a velocity—that is that on the disk being detonated, it communicates with those adjacent with a swiftness inferior only that of electricity or light—at the. rate of 20,000 feet, or nearly four miles per second, which for all practical purposes may be reckoned an instantaneous process.